Students may want to read Curtis's first novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963.

The audiobook of Bud, Not Buddy, complete with instrumental music, is recommended as a supplement to the written version.

For older students, John Steinbeck's classic, The Grapes of Wrath, is a must for understanding the effects of the Depression on Oklahoma farmers. For younger students, Children of the Dustbowl: The True Story of Weedpatch School, by Jerry Stanley documents the lives of migrant children in California in the 1930s. Out ofthe Dust, by Karen Hesse, is the poignant story, in prose poem form, of a family's desperate circumstances as their farm blows steadily away. A different story of the era is Grandpa Jake and the Good Christmas, by James Aldridge. It is the tale of a young girl who makes some surprising discoveries about her grandfather.